Design of an Automatic Womb-like Baby Hammock for a Safe and Better Neonatal Growth

Ng, Chuan Kit (2018) Design of an Automatic Womb-like Baby Hammock for a Safe and Better Neonatal Growth. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

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Abstract

Baby hammock is known to be necessity for an infant. Either western or eastern countries, the culture of using baby hammock to sooth baby has been widely spread and passed from generation to generation. The rocking motion of the baby hammock is found to be effective to provide relaxation and cause the infants easier to fall asleep. Over the last few decades, there were a lot of invention on baby cradle, seat, and crib to improve its features and performance because the devices above are more commonly used in the western country. However, the traditional vertical rocking baby hammock in Malaysia, Singapore and other countries in South East Asia region does not catch much people’s interest to make some improvement on it. A study (Ko et al., 2016) has been carried out to investigate the performance of vertical rocking baby hammock towards infants. The results has shown that the existing electronic baby hammock does not meet the ideal rocking parameters which suggested by a finding (Suima, 2009). Based on the analysis with the weight ranged from 2kg to 13kg, the optimum parameters to provide better soothing effect are amplitude of 60mm and frequency of 0.55Hz but the results has showed the dominant frequency and amplitude which produced by the particular type of baby hammock are 1.1Hz to 1.4Hz and 30 to 90mm respectively. Hence, the aim for this project is to invent or modify the existing electronic baby to adapt and maintain the frequency and amplitude of a rocking baby hammock at 0.55Hz and 60mm respectively with the weigh ranged from 2kg to 13kg. In order to maintain the rocking frequency, the speed of the rotating motor is the major concern. The speed of motor has to be maintain at a constant speed all the time when the load is weight from 2kg to 13kg. Any inconsistence of the performance of the motor could leads to unwanted vibrations. Hence, a feedback control loop with a rotary encoder will be used to enhance the performance consistency of the motor. The prototype will be tested by a series of equipment such as accelerometer, FFT analyser and post processing software in order to retrieve the frequency and the amplitude it produced. Frequency analysis will be done to verify the accuracy of the prototype towards the goals that we would like to achieve in this project.